This blog is to encorporate discussions on Lost Continents, Catastrophism, The origin of Modern Humans and the Out of Africa theory, Genetics and Human Diversity, The Origin and Spread of Civilization and Cultural Diffusion across the face of the Globe.

Deluge of Atlantis

Deluge of Atlantis

Friday, February 10, 2012

The Taking Of South America In Atlantean Times

["Paleoindian" Skull from Texas]

Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the Americas

And the study of the origins of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas
Archaeologists believe humans had entered and occupied much of the Americas by the end of the Pleistocene epoch, but the date of their original entry into the Americas is unresolved. The term “Paleo-Indians” is generally used to refer to early Native Americans up through the end of the Ice Age (c.8000 B.C.). Most authorities believe they entered North America from Siberia as small bands of migratory big-game hunters. Such a journey could have been made by means of a land bridge, known as Beringia, which emerged several times during the Pleistocene.

The Asian derivation of the Native Americans is supported by the physical similarity of the native populations of East Asia and the Americas; studies indicate that the DNA patterns of modern Native Americans are very similar to those of Asian populations. All human skeletal remains from the Americas, including the very oldest, have been found in geologically recent contexts and belong to anatomically modern human beings. While recent analyses of the early skeletal material from the Americas indicate these populations exhibited considerable variability, and had dental and cranial characteristics rather different from those of modern Native American populations, such differences probably resulted from a process of gradual physical evolution after one or more Asian-derived groups had reached the Americas.

The best known Paleo-Indian culture is that of the fluted-point hunters (see Clovis culture and Folsom culture), found throughout much of North America and dating to c.9300–8000 B.C.; they were specialized big-game hunters adapted to an open, temperate, terrestrial environment. For many years, most authorities believed the fluted-point hunters were the oldest Paleo-Indians in the Americas. The Paleo-Indians had reached the southern tip of South America by 9000–8500 B.C.

During the Pleistocene, glaciers covered much of North America, and the growth and contraction of these giant ice sheets may have played a crucial role in the timing of human migration into the Americas. During the height of the Wisconsin Glaciation (c.17,000–13,000 B.C.)—and perhaps several thousand years before and afterward as well—the ice formed a continuous sheet across N North America, preventing any overland migration from Alaska into the Great Plains of North America. For much of the 20th century, most Americanists held that the first Paleo-Indians entered lower North America only after the height of the Wisconsin Glaciation, when an ice-free corridor had emerged between the continental ice sheets in Canada. This development may have taken place as recently as 10,000 B.C. Then, according to this theory, the first Paleo-Indians moved rapidly southwards into North and South America, the speed of their migration being conditioned by the great abundance of game animals and the absence of human competitors in this virgin territory. These first inhabitants of North America were identified as the Clovis and Folsom fluted-point hunters.

A minority of archaeologists always opposed this theory and argued for the existence of an earlier, pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas. The presence of humans at the southern tip of South America by 9000—8500 B.C. suggested to some investigators that the fluted-point hunters were not the first migrants into the Americas, as this would have necessitated a very rapid rate of migration by these hunters. However, the absence of clearly convincing pre-Clovis sites frustrated the development of alternative models for the original human migration into the Americas. Some supposedly pre-Clovis sites contained very crude stone artifacts that had almost certainly been produced by natural processes. Other sites, such as the Meadowcroft Rock shelter near Pittsburgh and Wilson Butte Cave in Idaho, are more convincing, but many archaeologists remain skeptical and believe these and other early sites to have been misdated.

Two early South American sites have now won broad acceptance among archaeologists, giving impetus to the proponents of the pre-Clovis hypothesis. Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in S Chile (c.10,500 B.C.), is a remarkable pre-Clovis site in a moist peat bog with preserved perishable wooden and bone material. A large variety of plant remains were recovered at the site, along with mastodon meat, indicating its inhabitants practiced a hunting-and-gathering economy in a cool temperate rain forest. Pedra Pintada, near Monte Alegre in the lower Amazon (c.9,000–8,200 B.C.), is essentially contemporary with Clovis and represents a previously unknown Paleo-Indian subsistence pattern based on fishing, foraging, and limited hunting in the tropical rain forest. These early sites have shattered the archaeological consensus that the fluted-point hunters were the first Native Americans. While still earlier radiocarbon dates have been reported from some South American sites, including Monte Verde—reaching back to 30,000 B.C.—dates earlier than 12,000 B.C. are currently regarded as unproven by most Americanists.

Given the presence of the great North American glaciers throughout most of the late Pleistocene, the presence of humans in South America in the pre-Clovis era represents a puzzle. No new consensus on the problem of the antiquity of humans in the Americas has yet emerged. One possibility is that the original southward migration into the Americas occurred along the Pacific coast by groups who possessed boats. There is currently no direct evidence for such a migration along the Pacific Coast of North America, and this is not surprising, as rising sea levels during the Holocene would have concealed or destroyed early coastal settlements there. Recently, two pre-Clovis coastal sites, Quebrada Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay, have been reported in S Peru. They both date to c.10,000 B.C. and, along with Monte Verde, provide possible evidence for such a coastal migration. Another possibility is that the first Paleo-Indians migrated into lower North America over land prior to the formation of the continental ice sheet across Canada. Many experts believe the continental ice sheets presented an insurmountable barrier to terrestrial migrations after c.20,000 B.C.

At c.8000 B.C. the Pleistocene ended. Changing environmental conditions and the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna forced human groups to diversify their economic strategies and become more reliant on foraging and capturing small game. Known collectively as Archaic adaptations, these new subsistence strategies were highly specialized responses to local environmental conditions and actually emerged in different times in different places. In some regions, such as the Great Plains of North America, human reliance on big-game hunting continued until historic times. In contrast, the early South American sites described above indicate that a subsistence strategy based on plant foraging, the hunting of small game, and fishing actually emerged during the Pleistocene, thereby permitting an early colonization of a diversity of environments. In some areas of the New World, most notably the Andean region, the Amazon basin, Mesoamerica, the SW United States, and the Mississippi Basin and Eastern Woodlands, Archaic Native Americans evolved into sedentary agricultural societies, generally beginning about 2000 B.C., although recent radiocarbon dating of Caral, in Peru's Supe valley, indicates that a city of several thousand arose there c.2600 B.C.

Below, chart of projectile points in North America and some maps for Clovis and successor cultures. The best evidence is that Clovis started in the Southeast/Mississippi delta and move up inland until they filled the area up to the glacial margin. Clovis was preceeded by an earlier more Solutrean-like precourser culture.

At Right, some Early Archaic points from Florida with side-notching which come from the end of the Ice Age and seem to bear some affinity for the South American types of points. The South American points (and the ones from the Gulf Coast) seem to have some drivation from Clovis: there are also Clovis-like points in Mexico and one was found in Cuba.But for the most part the South American points are somewhat different and they resemble contemporary types of stone points from the Capsian culture of North Africa instead. Below are the Fell Point types which seem to derive from an even older type of Saharan thick-stemmed Aterian point. The Aterian is older than the Solutrean but thought to be associated with it. I shall post some more photos on the Capsian points in a later Blog entry I am already preparing. It will be good to refer back to the chart below then.

It seems these early "Archaic" sites (Mesolithic, experimenting with marine resources and incipient cultivation) started in around the Northern parts of South America, worked their way all around the rim of the continent abnd then started moving inland. The much later Arawaks continued much the same lifestyle, only in later years they received better crops developed by their neighbours. In South America you find that sebveral of the domesticated crops such as cassava (tapioca) are toxic in the natural state and underwnt a protracted proceedure of selective breeding to make them edible. Hence several of these crops (mostly root-crops) had to have been started by 8000-9000 BC.

Basically it seems that at 12500 BC (at least) there is an establishment of the East-Asian types of points (spearheads) at the Early Upper Pleistocene. But then about 11000 years ago (9000 BC)

you start getting these North African point types (as I interpret them) in the middle to late Upper Pleistocene. And this is asociated with the theory that most of South America was colonised quite suddenly by "Paleoindians" ("Paleoamerinds"), practically all in the space of 11000 to 9000 years ago (9000 to 7000 BC) as shown in the charts below (the older populations at the tip of South America are also the ones thought to be Australoids, and they were there already at the start of this process) These dates are highly significant in that they also correspond to the dates of the Atlantis empire and its fall, the start of plant-crop breeding and to the period of oldest mining in the Andes.

Below, a modified chart from National Geographic indicating both the CircumPacific and TransAtlantic routes into America, and the different stone tool types either way. As noted at the top, the ones coming out of Europe are thin and flat in cross-section and the Asiatic points are thicker

Lesson objectives: understand post-Pleistocene diversity of adaptations
and emergence of sedentary life.
How do we characterize the immediately post-Pleistocene human
adaptations in South America? On the different time charts in your
texts there is a confusing number of terms for the succession of time periods
depending upon the region and the archaeologist who set them up. In this section
of the course we will examine how people adapted to the changes in climate and
resources available after the end of the Ice Age, and the general transitions
into food production. The continent's environmental extremes may have fostered
early economic specialization. The Initial Period is defined based on the
appearance of ceramics, so important to archaeologists but perhaps not a major
revolution in the lives of people who began to make them. We will see how
monumental architecture begins before the emergence of both ceramics and food
production.
What species after Pleistocene extinctions remained to be
hunted? There were still all the camelid forms though a larger camel died out,
and there were deer and smaller game such as peccaries and tapirs (show pictures
in Lynch 1999:241). In the high Andes have been found several hunting sites (
Rick 1980 ). In the altiplano , Moseley discusses the
beginnings of transhumance as early as Late Paleo-Indian times.
Remember there is good evidence for late Paleo-Indian specialization of coastal
fishing and shellfishing. In many parts of South America some of these diverse
foraging lifestyles continued until very recent history. What are shell
middens? Coastal and riverine accumulations of shellfish garbage,
including bones of other species better preserved because of the alkaline shell
matrix, are common all over the world, including along all the Florida
shoreline. Such sites are present as early as 10000 years ago from the Santa
Elena peninsula of Ecuador (find on your map) to northern Chile, and also along
the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts too fairly early. On the south Chilean dry
coast permanent occupation by fishing peoples appears as early as 7000 B.P.
What are the famous Chinchorro mummies ? Up to over 7000 years
old, they may be the oldest mummies known in the world. Apparently these coastal
fishers in the Atacama desert buried their dead in ways that resulted in natural
mummification, and through time elaborated on the process. It is sometimes said
that the beloved dead, eviscerated, dried, stuffed, coated in colorful clays,
masks, textiles, and wigs, look more like modern art than mummified human
burials (Pringle 1998). There are great pictures in your texts and in other
sources shown in class (Allison 1985, Arriaza
1995). Chinchorro culture is called "sophisticated" because we have so many
artifacts resulting from complex craftwork that is usually not preserved
elsewhere (but probably existed in equally sophisticated forms all over the
continent). Simply everything is preserved because it dries out. Some of these
items are elaborate fishing nets woven of reeds (chinchorro means gill netters),
hooks, composite harpoons of cactus and bone, ropes and cords, textiles, and
wooden items from spear throwers (atlatls) and mortars and pestles to figurines.
Some 1500 mummies are now known, many up to 3000 years earlier than Egyptian
mummies. Mummification depended on natural processes involving the total absence
of water combined with windblown sand, nitrates and other salts in the soil.
They were buried sitting up, covered with cloth and reed mats. They were
originally investigated and named by Max Uhle, and now we see some of the oldest
ones involved complex preparation and great knowledge of anatomy. Preparation of
the dead was done by cutting open the body, taking out the insides, cutting away
skin and hair, possibly with a pelican beak tool, taking out the big muscles and
brain, filling the body with hot coals to dry it, soaking the skin and hair in
saltwater, then driving a sharp stick up the spine and legs to make the corpse
rigid. The dry body was then filled with wool, feathers, grass, shells, and
soil, and the head wedged back on with poles, then molded clay was put over it
all to make the limbs look lifelike and sculpt a face mask. Bunches of hair were
tied on and all was painted in red and black and covered with reed mats. With
children, some of the earliest mummies, the skin was cut in strips and wrapped
around the body like a bandage. Sometimes skins of other animal were used,
pelicans or sea lions. At first they were not buried but placed sitting upright,
in communal groups, and kept in good repair until some later occasion when they
were buried in (family?) groups.
What is the evidence of Chinchorro subsistence and society ?
From midden soils, even some stuffed into mummies, we see great use of seabirds,
fish, shellfish, sea mammals, whalebone, rhea (large bird) skin, llama wool, and
no food production except possibly cultivation of reeds for weaving. We can
learn a lot from paleopathology studies of the bodies. Up to 1/4 of the men had
bony growths in their ears that are common in swimmers. Perhaps this shows a
division of labor by gender if they were the ones diving for shellfish (except
that among competition swimmers today such a "swimmer's ear" is less common
among women than among men). Women did have squatting facets on the ankle/shin
joint and arthritis of the neck vertebrae, probably from carrying heavy loads,
and 2/3 of them had osteoporosis (today only about 30% of women under 40 have
this lessening of bone density). A division of labor is not indicated in burial
goods, which are hunting and fishing gear buried with both sexes. They had
healthier teeth than agricultural peoples did, and ate a very healthy fish diet,
but recent studies of parasites in their bodies (Pringle 1998) show many had
anemia from tapeworms, possibly picked up from seafood. The general picture is
one of a very egalitarian society, with somewhat different treatment of mummies
possibly relating to different social positions in families, or designation of
shamans.
What are ethical concerns about studying human remains such
as mummies to determine prehistoric health, diet, and demographics? There is no
equivalent in South America of the North American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which protects unmarked human remains on federal
lands, the state laws such as Florida's unmarked human burials law, or the
general ethical concerns of U.S. archaeologists who, even for human skeletons on
private land, need to find any descendant peoples and consult with them about
proper treatment of the remains. (for marked human graves, with headstones,
which are of course usually non-aboriginal peoples, there are many laws against
disturbing them). The absence of such laws makes it easier to study Chinchorro
mummies or any other South American indigenous human remains, which is why in
many cases they are deliberately chosen for this (Pringle 1998). But the ethical
concerns of archaeologists should be the same anywhere ø try to find the related
living people and have some dialog with them about what might constitute
disrespect and what might be permitted or viewed as respectful treatment.
What other sites and regions have evidence of early coastal sedentism
? On the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador, the Vegas
cultural complex dates between 8000-4700 B.C., representing the
earliest people in the area, who stayed there till apparent climatic change that
left estuarine ecosystems more barren and dry. We will often see major culture
change or abandonment associated with climatic change in South America, and we
must determine if environmental explanations are adequate and sufficient (not to
mention correct!). Vegas sites on the Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador (find on
may) produce both aquatic and terrestrial species remains, including molluscs
from mangrove areas, and evidence of round wattle and daub houses 2 meters in
diameter, gourds, squash, and some maize remains (a problem is determining if
these are gathered or cultivated), and simple chert tools for woodworking.
Bruhns shows (p.69) a picture of a burial of a woman and an adolescent, a double
burial with the child apparently wrapped up in a bundle. Was this younger person
processed earlier and held until the later burial of the adult woman? Moseley
makes the case for burial in the tropical forest as being usually secondary, in
other words, the body is processed earlier, because it is the hot tropics and
you have to take care of it right away. This is in contrast with the Andes, he
says, where burial is primary, just put the dead body right in. How does this
contrast with the Chinchorro mummies?
Describe the archaeology at the Peruvian north coast site of Nanchoc.
Located in the Zana River valley, and dating from as early as 7000-5500
B.C., the site has a pair of flat-topped, oblong earthen mounds, 1.5 meters
high, 3 tiers faced with basalt and limestone boulders, built in increments. So
early in the post-Pleistocene record we see already the construction of
earthworks, and we will be exploring the relationship between monumental
architecture (which begins to occur in great amounts as early as 3000 B.C. in
late preceramic times) and social complexity. This region, on the west slope of
the Andes, was thought to be too dry for habitation but is actually rich with
resources associated with the rivers, the remnant montane forest and lower thorn
forest and steppe that was probably more forested in the prehistoric past. Along
with evidence from 51 other residential sites found nearby, the site documents
apparently a very specialized adaptation: the processing of calcium rocks
obtained from nearby quebradas (ravines with springs) by burning and grinding.
This may have been for making mineral supplements for the grain and tuber meals,
but was more likely to make cakes of powdered lime (cal) to use with coca. A
pinch of cal releases the biologically active alkaloid in the leaves as they are
chewed. A few sites yielded preserved coca leaves (show pictures of these
artifacts and ecofacts from Dillehay et al. 1997).
How did the people live at Nanchoc? They were hunter-gatherers, eating mostly
plants and possibly experimenting with horticulture (gardening). Biotic remains
included small mammals, rodents, birds, squash, peanuts, quinoa, manioc. There
is scant domestic refuse at the main site, a few hearths and metates, but there
are exotics that could have been exchanged for the coca and/or the cal:
malachite, quartz crystal, cut seashells, stingray spines, a Paijan point, cut
marine shells and stingray spines (the coast is 75 km away). The residential
sites in the valley have ditches that may have been for irrigating garden plots
near springs, and there is some evidence of cotton. Burials show lots of
processing, cut marks on longbones showing defleshing (possibly cannibalism),
and teeth with heavy wear (along with bright polish on stone tools, this
indicates heavy reliance on vegetable matter). Only 2 of the 50,000 stone tools
are bifacial; the unifacial tools were for plant and wood processing. The
general impression is of a generalized economy with a very specialized
non-domestic site that shows industrial production for coca use, and probably
communal pooling of labor at the mounds for both production and ritual. The
mounds show long-term use and repair; perhaps the fact that there are 2
indicates a moiety system (dual division of society) that we see later in South
America. But there is no evidence of population pressure or environmental change
leading to increasing complexity, and indeed neither earthworks nor communal
manufacturing need a hierarchical sociopolitical system to get done. Here we can
see however a long transition to sedentary life and interaction over a wide
geographical area involved in production of important resources (in this case
coca). We also see that the earliest cultivated crops are apparently not foods
but utilitarian cotton and (possibly) ritual coca; there is the manioc evidence,
which also suggests early domestication of this lowland forest crop and movement
of it into this highland area.
What other sites are important along the Peruvian coast? Bruhns mentions
later sites in the Ancon area , the Encanto phase, dating to 5600 B.P.,
associated with shellfish, manos and metates, circular houses, probably with
perishable walls and thatched roofs (see picture p. 70), with remains of
domestic bottle gourd, squash, and grasses and reeds (were they domesticated?
they are floodplain plants needing little care). On the central coast Jeffrey
Quilter (1989) dug at La Paloma site, a fishing village that
began as a seasonal occupation around 6500 B.P. and continued to show more
sedentary habitation up to 5000 B.P. Similar houses contained burials wrapped in
mats, the adult male in the center and the rest along the walls and filling in
the house floors. Some were left on floors and the house destroyed around them.
Some of the corpses were salted for preservation. So this is an early example of
keeping the beloved dead with you in the house. The greatest number of burials
are infants and children, indicating a 30% child mortality rate. Both your books
say the majority of these are female, suggesting infanticide, but it is very
hard to tell the sex of an infant skeleton. The large number of adult women
buried suggests death in childbirth, which in prehistoric and even recent
historic times was a frequent occurrence. The women seem to be in their 30s,
which suggests delayed reproduction ø intriguing because, what might be the
reason for this? What else can kill 30-something women? What if they were the
warriors?! The careful study of these burials showed pathologies such as TB,
broken bones, arthritis, more of the bony growths of swimmer's ear, even a guy
dead of a shark bite. One burial of a man in his 40s with another in his 20s has
been interpreted (Bruhns p. 72) as a pair of lovers and/or shamanic, since there
was also a calcite crystal and a staff (but what about son and dad, if this is
such a family place?). Both the large number of nets and fish hooks, and the
abundant remains of shells, fish, and birds and mammals of the sea indicate a
marine adaptation. Very important were the small fish, the anchovies or
anchoveta, which are abundant all the time except when there is the warm El Niño
current. Moseley sees gender inequality in the earliest remains, in which bone
chemistry shows men ingesting more protein than women, and in later times the
levels became more equal as the childhood anemia also decreased and adult
stature increased. Coprolites and stomach contents of burials showed high
protein levels but also seeds of wild grasses. Items from afar were obsidian
from the mountains, a rainforest monkey, and the bright pink Spondylus
or spiny oyster shell that had to have been obtained from the warm waters
off the coast of Ecuador. We will see this shell gain in importance throughout
prehistory, and it is a good marker of interaction over long distances [it is often used as money or as trade currency-DD].
What characterizes highland adaptation in Peru? We have
already mentioned Guitarrero Cave; it also has later Archaic period or
preceramic occupation from 8000-5000 B.C. with the oldest cultivated plants yet
found in the New World (see Moseley p. 104-5): domesticated beans (
Phaseolus ), and tubers such as oca and ulluco which may or may not be
domesticated, various fruits, and chili pepper. Most of the well preserved plant
remains were from an extensive fiber industry, however, that included mats,
clothes, containers, cordage, textiles, netting, and some wooden artifacts.
Again, we see the emphasis of industrial over food plants. The site showed an
initial phase of hunting deer and then changing to camelids (maybe
intensification leading to domestication of them?). At many sites we can see
shifts from wide-spectrum gathering and hunting to more narrow adaptations
toward fewer species, then toward domestication.
Describe adaptations from this period on the coast of Chile. Las
Conchas cultural adaptation here, as early as 8500 B.C., produced shell
middens with abalone, limpet, sea lion, fish, guanaco, and bird remains, as well
as small mortars. Bruhns (p.73) says there was little plant food to grind, and
seeds recovered contained an alkaloid that is known in ayahuasca, a jungle
hallucinogen. Seeds may have been ground to make snuff, a manner of ingestion
known for later peoples. At other sites such drugs are associated with tubes and
trays for different manners of administration, and their use continues today in
many parts of the continent. Different south coast cultures of this time period
have differing fishing technology, hooks of shell, then cactus spines, then
composite bone hooks. There is more evidence through time of deep sea fish and
sophisticated maritime technology, including use of inflated sea lion skins and
reed boats.
What is happening on the east side of the continent? There are shell middens
in Patagonia and along the Brazilian coast the beginnings of huge shell mounds
called sambaquis . See picture in Bruhns p. 78; just like in
Florida, shell mounds are mined for road fill and other uses, but these are so
big that a lot remains. Rock shelter sites have produced brushes, palettes, and
shells for painting red, along with foods such as palm nuts and fruits. By 3000
B.C. there is possibly some maize, shells of a giant snail that yields 100 g of
meat, deer and other forest animals. There are flexed burials with raised arms
suggesting they were wrapped in nets or hammocks. Society appears egalitarian
except for possible divisions of labor by age and sex: men are buried with stone
tools and women and kids with wooden and plant remains. Open-air sites have
evidence of semi-subterranean houses typical of later cultures.
What about an Amazonian adaptation at this time? Not even
mentioned in your books is the work of Roosevelt (1999) and Brazilian and other
colleagues (Roosevelt et al. 1991) near Santarem in the lower Amazon at the
Taperinha shell midden. They got 48 strata of shells, charcoal, bone, flake
tools, grinding stones, hammers, bone awls, shell and turtle shell scrapers,
even a tool of aquatic mammal bone. Faunal remains of shellfish, turtles, and
fish indicate a successful fishing adaptation and fairly permanent settlement.
The most fascinating aspect of the work is that they also recovered what would
have to be the earliest ceramics in the New World, along with a group of dates
on various materials that range from 8000-7100 B.C. The pottery is at least 1000 years
earlier than any other in South America, 2000 years older than the earliest in
the southeastern U.S., and 3000 years earlier than the earliest in Mesoamerica.
We will return to this early ceramic discussion shortly. First we go back to
Peru for a famous late preceramic site.
How can you describe the remains excavated at Huaca Prieta
on the north coast of Peru? The site is in the Chicama valley (find on
map). It was dug by Junius Bird (Bird and John Hyslop1985) in the 40s but not
published until 1985, after his death, when it was clear the site was far older
than it had been thought to be given that it was a huge mounded midden. The name
means dark mound, from the soil darker than the surrounding earth because of
organic enrichment by human activity and garbage. Preservation in this shell
midden was so great that a wealth of textiles was available for systematic
study, and Bird and others pioneered in this field, deriving from these
artifacts information on plant and animal domestication, chemical knowledge of
dyes, mathematics from calculations for construction of woven designs,
iconography, and even individual personalities of weavers (Willey 1988). We can
see in the geometric designs necessarily dictated by the medium of woven
textiles the rectilinear patterns later used to decorate pottery (where you do
not have to have geometric figures but this has become tradition!).
Archaeologists could plot woven strands on graph paper and see the changing
through time from twining to weaving, the step up in cloth production with the
introduction of the loom. Bird himself learned to weave and taught and inspired
others in all this study.
For your reference, here are pictures of the basics of cordage and textiles.
Very clear pictures (Sutton and Arkush 1996:152) of Z-twist and S-twist (in the
direction of the letters), both 2-ply (2 twisted strands) and 4-ply (4-strands,
so it becomes rope, beyond cordage). To see using the cords to make textiles,
see this drawing (Sutton and Arkush 1996:151) of the difference between twining
(wrapping the weft around the warp), tight coiling around the warp using the
weft, and simple plaiting (weaving in and out, both directions). See textile
motifs in Moseley (p. 108, 116) from Huaca Prieta including multi-headed eels,
condor, other marine motifs with the symmetry you would expect in woven craft.
Also on p. 116 you see the similar symmetrical, geometric motifs pyro-engraved
on gourd containers found at the site. The excellent preservation included
evidence of cane and adobe houses in the earliest levels then semi-subterranean
houses lined with cobbles. There were no ceramics, little evidence of hunting
(the stone tools were relatively simple), but lots of fishing and gathering of
fruits and bulbs, some beans and peppers and also snuff trays and sniffing tubes
(which of course could have been for any number of things). Remains of cotton
were in different colors (now very much in style in fancy catalogs that
advertize natural undyed colored cottons in color terms such as "celery"), and
of early domesticated variety that has a great resemblance to wild cotton (the
boll gets bigger through time). Bruhns (p.80) says apparently watercraft were
lacking, but more likely they were kept on the beach, not at home, and were just
not preserved. The social system at the site appeared very egalitarian. One
burial of an older woman was very interesting, however, at this site where few
had any offerings at all. She had in her mouth chewed plant remains including a
flower still used for soothing toothaches. She had one pouch of cattail fiber
containing a gourd bottle, stem and seeds, willow leaves, more flowers, and reed
tuber food, and another pouch with two engraved gourd lids. She may have come
from elsewhere and/or been important for her age or healing talents (Bruhns and
Stothert 1999:74). This burial shows special treatment for an elderly woman,
something we seldom see in our own society!
What are early sites on the north continental coast ? Very
famous for early ceramics is Puerto Hormiga on an old channel
of the Magdalena River (find on map) in an estuarine locale, a U-shaped shell
midden site. It looks like as early as 3300-3100 B.C. this site has pottery with
lots of aquatic species, though no evidence of agriculture. The pottery is
fiber-tempered, and when found, decades ago, was quickly tied in with
fiber-tempered pottery of the southeastern U.S., which is slightly later. The
model constructed then had pottery being invented here and diffusing to the U.S.
SE. The finding of Amazonian pottery several thousand years earlier seems to
invalidate this model. But the Taperinha pottery is grit-tempered, even a small
amount with shell tempering, and a small percentage has incised rim decorations.
Could the concept of fired clay vessels be invented independently in two
different times and places? Remember, the concept of firing clay was invented
some 20,000 years ago with Paleolithic figurines in Europe, but then apparently
lost until the earliest ceramic vessels appeared in Japan about 10,000 years
ago.
What is the importance of the Valdivia site? Contemporaneous
with the late preceramic in Peru, this site and complex on the Ecuadorian coast
has early pottery, agriculture, economic specialization and different kinds of
architecture dependent upon function by about 3100-3000 B.C. It is a huge shell
midden representing a fishing village north of the Santa Elena peninsula, dug by
Meggers, Evans, and Estrada (1965) in an estuarine setting. It began as a small
village of cane houses, and the well-made pottery included female figurines (see
Bruhns p. 118) and decorated bowls with rocker stamping and motifs similar to
those on the Huaca Prieta gourds. The ceramics are sophisticated and not what
you would expect from the earliest stages of a new industry. Domesticated crops
were cotton, beans, and maize, and there is evidence of hunting. There is also
clear evidence of contact or interaction with people down the coast for the
exchange of Spondylus shells, but the archaeologists interpreted the
site as demonstrating even longer distance contact Ñ with Japan. According to
Meggers, the pottery looked very much like the early Jomon wares of Japanese
Neolithic fishers, who must have traveled across the Pacific and landed in
Ecuador and brought it to South America.
Here we have another of the many colorful controversies and debates in this
field, and Meggers and a few others are still holding out for trans-Pacific
contact even in the face of now mounting evidence of the evolution in place of
ceramic technology. Yes, adventurer (and sometime archaeologist) Thor Heyerdahl
did build reed boats and make it across the Pacific, proving you can do it. He
did not prove anyone in prehistory did do it. What might we need to support the
model of Japanese contact? More than just artifacts that resemble one another,
we would need a whole complex of cultural behaviors. As for transoceanic
contact , there is greater likelihood of it across the Atlantic, where
we find similarities in both African and Brazilian indigenous technologies such
as bark cloth and fish poisons. Remember that diffusion was not
only a powerful explanatory force in the archaeology of the early 20 th century,
but also it is coming back, especially it seems in postprocessual arguments.
This is interesting, because some of this diffusionary thinking is very
ethnocentric and racist. The ultimate example we will see later on the Nazca
Plains, where the patterned lines manufactured in the earth were said to be
products of ancient astronauts who landed there. This is as racist as you can
get ø seeing the natives as too dumb and simple to think up complex
technologies!
It is much more interesting to debate various interpretations of the
female figurines from Valdivia, which are usually found in
trash areas but possibly it is ceremonial trash. They have been considered
representations of deities, perhaps for use in female puberty rites, cult
objects perhaps related to household welfare, and many other things (Bruhns and
Stothert 1999:192-95). There are pregnant figurines, two-headed ones, bisexual
ones, and some with cut or shaved hair . While such figurines continue to be
made through time, more male ones appear later. What meaning might this have?
Remember that it is far easier to reconstruct subsistence and technology than
social systems, and hardest of all is ideological systems, which must be
represented by these figurines (unless they are just toys, prehistoric Barbies).
Do the numerous representations of women mean they had honored positions or were
more important than men? We can look at Catholicism, in which there are
representations of the Virgin Mary all over the place but the ideology is
greatly male-dominated.
An important Valdivia phase site is Real Alto , south of the
Santa Elena peninsula, a large village with large houses having mud-plastered
walls, possibly for extended families, and a rectangular plaza on which are two
larger buildings. Are these communal party houses with maize or manioc beer
served in the bowls? There are animal bones from delicacies such as crabs,
clams, lobster, and turtle. A charnel house dating from about 2800-2600 B.C. has
burials including a 35-year-old woman in a central tomb lined with grinding
stones, a defleshed man with 7 chert knives, and several other secondary
burials. Could this be a matrilineal family? Offerings to the woman? Could the
woman be a sacrificial offering for initiating the structure? Doing gender in
prehistory is VERY difficult because there are so many interpretations. There
seem to be guardian burials at every structure, and many skeletons showed
evidence of interpersonal violence. Increasing sedentism and horticulture
affected health in ways such as dental cavities and other problems (Bruhns and
Stothert 1999: 99-100).
What characterizes Late Preceramic in the Sierra ? The
earliest evidence of cultivation appears at the lower elevations. A very
important site is Kotosh , in the Huallaga River drainage (find
it on map) at about 2000 meters high, in an environment with some forest and
thorn trees. This site has 2 large platform mounds and other structures on the
river terrace (again, the idea of duality of social organization). Mounds are
100 m in diameter, 8 m high, and show 10 construction phases. There were single
rooms with hearths, plastered floors, maybe evidence of ritually burned food.
One great platform had chambers built of cobbles in mud mortar, one 9 m square,
with plastered walls and ornamental niches, 2 of which are accompanied by
crossed arms of clay depicted on the walls. In the preceramic Mito phase at
Kotosh there were recovered seeds, guinea pig, deer, camelids (either hunted or
herded) and leaf-shaped stone points. There was no evidence of cultivated plants
but they probably had them. It is important to note that many stone axes
recovered here look Amazonian, and when succeeding phases do come to have
pottery, it also looks derived from the Amazon.
What are other highland sites with platforms and monumental
architecture during the Preceramic? At La Galgada, to the northwest, by
2200 B.C. we have beans, squash, fruit, chili peppers, gourd, cotton, irrigation
canals, marine shell beads (80 km from coast), Amazonian feathers (80 km from
the tropical forest). So there is clear evidence of goods moving east and west
over the Andes. La Galgada is one of the best-preserved of the
early sierra ceremonial centers (Grieder et al. 1988). As Moseley remarks (p.
121), burnt offerings of chilis would certainly have brought tears to the eyes
of ritual participants! It has 2 mounds with chambers similar to those at
Kotosh, oval platform with circular sunken court, oval chambers of stones in mud
mortar plastered and painted white, with niches, and clay-capped log roofs. The
chambers became tombs in later construction phases ø were these ancestral
shrines? In the final phases here we have the introduction of the loom and
ceramics between 1700-1200 B.C. This site shows early evidence of important
traditions of hereditary elites, shown by differential grave goods, and
veneration of ancestors.
What is the Supe Tradition? The largest preceramic huacas
were on the central coast of Peru, and Moseley's discussion names many sites in
the Supe Valley, coastal and inland. The flat-topped mounds are for ritual
display in front of large audiences, in contrast to what was going on in the
Kotosh Tradition of interior, small chambers for more private ceremony. These
mound centers may have been built by people who lived elsewhere in small
settlements and came together for communal ceremonies, or they may be pilgrimage
centers. There are usually dark middens with lots of charcoal near the platforms
built of stone and earth. One important site is Huaca de los Sacrificios
, where an adult and child burial in the summit were interpreted as
offerings. The child had hundreds of beads of shell and clay and the other body
was wrapped in cotton cloth with cane matting and wads of cotton all under a
tetrapodal stone grinding basin with red pigment inside. Another mound site,
Huaca de los Idolos had a complex maze of rooms with benches,
niches, a cache of baskets, mats, plants and animal fur preserved. There were
also many clay figurines (los idolos; see Moseley p. 125-6), mostly of women,
some pregnant, in skirts, red bead necklaces. We have already seen how figurines
are more common in the tropical north.
How could such monumental constructions be done by people who may not
yet have had agriculture or ceramics ? It took a while for
archaeologists to understand this was possible. Gordon Willey (1989) said it was
even difficult to realize they were constructed features and not natural hills
in the landscape. An interesting site lately debated in this context is
Caral , an inland complex which Moseley (p.119) discusses in
terms of the Plaza Hundida (sunken courtyard) tradition. Recent work at Caral by
a Peruvian-U.S. archaeology team (Pringle 2001, Shady Solis et al. 2001) has
produced dates of 4090-3640 B.P. (calibrated to 2627-1977 B.C.) for irrigation
agriculture and a monumental center some are calling a true city. The site is 23
km inland from the coast in the Peruvian desert, and covers 65 hectares (150
acres). It had 8 sectors of smaller homes of poles and mud, grand residences
with stone walls, 2 circular plazas, and 6 immense platform mounds built of
quarried stone and river cobbles. The stones were hauled in by the builders in
reed bags, called shicras, many of which are preserved. Outer walls were covered
with multiple layers of colored plaster. The largest platform mound, the
Piramide Mayor, is 160 x 150 m and 18 m high. Squash, beans, guava and cotton
were grown (but no corn), but also fish bones and mollusk shells and coprolites
with anchovy and sardine bones. There were also fragments of achiote (a
rainforest plant) and coca plants that had to have come from afar. Peruvian
soldiers helped excavate, and among artifacts recovered are cute carved bone
flutes (pictures in Ross 2002). Today the site is a bunch of rubble-covered,
windblown hills in the desert, mainly disguised from looter until now.
Caral, the Aspero site, and 16 others in the Supe Valley alone suggest early
sociopolitical complexity that involved moving beyond the immediate floodplain
of the rivers to desert areas that can be easily irrigated, and organization in
large communal, centralized groups to direct establishment of such enormous
sites. Since the people were getting seafood regularly, one interpretation is
that they grew and traded cotton for nets with coastal people, and that such an
industry allowed emergence of urbanism.
What is the maritime hypothesis or "maritime foundations of
Andean civilization" (MFAC) idea? Here we discuss some of the big questions of
archaeology: the origins of sedentism, food production, and civilization. Since
students have already discussed these issues in introductory archaeology classes
(or go over an intro text such as Ashmore and Sharer 2000), you know that there
are many and competing arguments for various processes behind these fundamental
and huge cultural shifts. The maritime hypothesis was put forth by Moseley
(1975) based on all the evidence we have reviewed of settled life and huge
huacas, great sites on the Peruvian coast, but without agriculture or ceramics
(two things that are thought to emerge only after people settled down, or
somehow be instrumental in getting people to settle in one place year-round).
The idea is that maritime resources, the staple anchoveta and so many others,
are so dependable that a fishing lifestyle can allow people to live in one place
year-round. This sedentism is a "pre-adaptation" for agriculture and development
of complexity; in other words, when those processes do come in, they come early
because they are easy to fit in since you are already there year-round. At some
coastal sites with early agriculture, we see cotton and gourds (for bottles and
floats and bowls), industrial crops needed for this fishing life, grown
earliest, and not food production. Moseley has later modified the maritime
hypothesis to include some cultivated but also some wild food plants, as more
evidence has become available over the years. One argument against the maritime
hypothesis has been that this adaptation cannot be sustained in the face of the
many El Niño or ENSO episodes that would have wiped out the anchoveta with a
warm current. But some studies show that in those years, other seafood resources
become abundant. A study this year showed there are cycles (apparently apart
from ENSOs) in which anchovies are abundant for about 25 years, then sardines
take their place (Associated Press 2003). Though a crash in sardines led to
California canneries closing and hard times shown in John Steinbeck's book
Cannery Row , for prehistoric fisherfolk out there netting anything
that swam around, it would not be as much of a crisis.
The new work producing such early dates at Caral, however, suggests the
preceramic monumental sites are earlier inland in the river valleys where
complex hierarchical society could produce large irrigation systems and great
community centers, and after this the coastal sites became more settled and
important. And of course there was some food agriculture at Caral also. In
letters to Science after the Caral findings came out last year,
Sandweiss and Moseley (2001) pointed out that there are earlier sites with
monumental architecture and early agriculture on the coast. One is
Aspero , with many mounds begun centuries earlier, and Huaca
Prieta may be also, and many are contemporaneous with Caral. La Galgada, 74 km
inland and 1100 m above sea level is contemporaneous with Caral and also has
monumental architecture, domesticated plants, and probably irrigation. Since at
all these sites the main protein is still coming from seafood, the maritime
hypothesis is confirmed by the Caral findings, which show a seafood foundation
for cultural complexity to originate. But in a response letter (Haas and Creamer
2001) the Caral archaeologists say that the Caral site and its mounds are still
far larger than at any of these other sites, and furthermore large-scale
agriculture there to produce cotton for nets would have been needed, thus
demonstrating that complex society in the Andes, as elsewhere in the world,
needed both an agricultural foundation and extensive economic interaction
between regions. So again we see these fascinating debates, which center around
the oldest and the biggest, especially in the popular renditions such as in
Smithsonian magazine (Ross 2002). We will continue examining these
issues, including urbanism, in the next lessons.

The ancient Egyptians were not the only ones who mummified those who
died. Half way around the world, we find the Chinchorro mummies -
mummified remains of individuals from the South American Chinchorro culture
found in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru.
The Chinchorro mummies are the earliest examples of the deliberate
preservation of the dead. The mummies may have served as a means of assisting
the soul in surviving, and to prevent the bodies from frightening the living.
They are the oldest examples of mummified human remains, dating to thousands of
years before the Egyptian mummies. They are believed to have first appeared
around 5000 B.C. and reaching a peak around 3000 B.C.
Often Chinchorro mummies were elaborately prepared by removing the internal
organs and replacing them with vegetable fibers or animal hair. In some cases an
embalmer would remove the skin and flesh from the dead body and replace them
with clay. Shell midden and bone chemistry suggest that 90% of their diet was
seafood. Many ancient cultures of fisherfolk existed, tucked away in the arid
river valleys of the Andes, but the Chinchorro made themselves unique by their
dedicated preservation of the dead.
The Chinchorro mummies are significant because during the periods of these
mummies, everyone who died was mummified, including children, new-borns and
fetuses. This shows that it was not reserved for those of high rank or high
status - mummification was not a sign of social stratification.

Radiocarbon dating reveals that the oldest, discovered Chinchorro mummy was
that of a child from a site in the Camarones Valley, about 60 miles south of
Arica and dates from around 5050 B.C. The mummies continued to be made until
about 1800 B.C., making them contemporary with Las Vegas culture and Valdivia
culture in Ecuador and the Norte Chico civilization in Peru.

2 comments:

David Campbell writes:"Good article, Dale, but you might want to insert an update to include the Friedkin/Buttermilk Creek site in Central Texas. This site is just a little north of the well known Gault Clovis site and pushes the accepted mainstream Paleoindian dates back to 15,000 YBP. This was announced and accepted by Mike Waters last year, though there were rumors of it at least a year before in the Texas archaeological community. Mike Collins is said to have found lithics of that age at Gault 4 or 5 years ago but he did not push it very hard and instead continued to dig "until we hit bedrock". This is but a tiny increment compared to Dillehay and Guidon's 30,000 YBP finds in South America or the incredibly old Valsequillo lithics and artifacts but it's a baby step in the right direction as far as accepted mainstream dates go. Still every little bit helps.Yours truly,David Campbell"

AND MY REPLY WAS:"I have been seeing that figure of 15000 BP on American sites popping up for years and somehow it keeps getting forgotten afterwards. My Archaeology texbook from the course I took at IU in the mid-1980s cites the 15000 BP date for early "Paleoindian" and has no problems with it at all. And Muller-Beck on his article about the various New World lithic industries hypothesizes an older "Pre-Clovis" stage which is essentially identical to Sandia in all but name.

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